Radix Fidem Blog

Obedience Right Now

Posted on May 8, 2025 by ehurst

It’s all about God and His Covenant.

God calls His Elect into the Covenant. Sadly, a great many of them don’t even understand this, so they miss out on some of what the Covenant offers. Election makes you God’s family; the Covenant gives you a purpose for living in this world. You are in a position to see clearly the bigger picture of what the Covenant means. You live in communion with the Creator and Creation.

Sinners have a random life. God’s purpose is not involved, despite what they may believe about such things. The only purpose they have is whatever lies Satan and his allies tell them.

Most Americans have no clue what’s going on with the Covenant and divine promises. They tend to see life from a western point of view. Everything is about themselves as individuals. They have a false view of God and Creation and don’t really understand the Scripture. They read their needs and wants back into the Bible, their solipsistic orientation. They think God’s wrath is just like the American justice system, based on punitive retribution. God was never like that.

His wrath on sinners is first and foremost no Holy Spirit. They have no clue on anything that matters. They cannot make sense of their lives because they don’t have divine revelation to clear up things. They may feel like they prosper or may not; it’s random and subjective. If you view their lives in light of American justice, maybe it looks like they get away with murder. If they do, it means God isn’t the least bit concerned about them in terms of how He cares for His family. He disciplines His own children, not strangers. They belong to the Devil.

Eventually, they’ll end up in Hell — Satan’s Abyss, Sheol, the grave. They’ll suffer there until Christ returns, and then they’ll be judged and cease to exist. Whether or not they appear to suffer in this life for their sins is not the point. They don’t know God. Divine justice is eternal, not temporal. There can be nothing worse than being a stranger to God; that’s punishment enough.

This common focus on “getting what’s coming to you” in this life is not from the Bible. It’s a lie from Satan built into American culture. Humans cannot do justice without the Presence and power of the Holy Spirit. Under the divine Presence, people don’t worry about retribution in this life. This world is a delusion in the first place. You suffer because you are in this world; it’s a big lie and so is the suffering. If you have peace with God, nothing else matters.

Let the sinners take all they want of this world, because it’s all they will ever get.

Meanwhile, you have the Covenant. A critical part of the Covenant is understanding that it’s not about you. It’s about God and His glory. That’s part of the Old Testament Hebrew mindset that we try to teach. Furthermore, it’s very much about His glory when viewed over multiple generations. Understanding that is part of the Covenant; it’s fundamental to peace with God. It’s bigger than you and your life. His revelation calls you to build from the ashes of previous generations’ mistakes and testify to what God does across centuries.

But if your head isn’t there, you can’t do it. If all your mental calculus is short-term, then you cannot obey Him. Your brief passage through time is not important unless you can seize the eternal viewpoint and work for future generations to see your legacy of faith. Don’t look for an impact on this world during your own lifetime; the bulk of what God wants from you will have its greatest effects after you are gone.

That’s not the whole thing, but it should be your focus. On the way to that legacy, you will surely see some difference in the near term, but that’s not the main goal. Keep your eye on the eternal consequences of your obedience here and now.

Posted in teaching | Tagged Covenant of Christ, God's wrath, human futility, sin, spiritual discipline, The Abyss | Leave a comment

Where Is the Focus?

Posted on May 7, 2025 by ehurst

Several years ago I rode my mountain bike around the shores of Lake Stanley Draper. It’s an artificial reservoir enclosed by a dam and fed by a pair of creeks (East and West Elm Creeks) and several smaller run-offs from higher ground. Underlying the whole area is a thick layer of red sandstone. On that previous series of rides exploring the shoreline, I noted quite a few places where some of that sandstone remained fairly solid, standing up out of the water. It was all quite lovely to me.

Several years passed while the water level remained mostly high. Further, because Oklahoma is so windy, that water was relentlessly whipped into waves from all directions over the course of each year. When I went back out on my new bike, I was struck by how many of those sandstone projections had simply washed away. The shoreline is now quite boring.

Just so, time itself wears away our human awareness of some things. This is both good and bad. Trauma is a lot easier handle as it recedes into the past. But good things can also be forgotten. This is the reason so much of what we read in the Law of Moses. Woven into the code is a whole raft of things intended solely to keep fresh an awareness of God and His relationship to the nation.

Nothing can stop the indolent souls from losing track of the miracles of the Exodus. But for those who were Elect, the rituals could really help keep alive the sense of His power and their humility as they stood before the Lord. I can still feel those jagged rocky formations I walked on at Draper Lake, even if I can’t see them any more.

This is behind Heiser’s first lesson in Leviticus. He explains what would have been the mindset of conscious believers in Israel when the ritual law was revealed through Moses.

As always, I would say Heiser left out some important stuff. Biblical feudalism pervades Creation itself. As those who had been redeemed by great acts of power, they were the property of their Redeemer. His actions in rescuing them made them accountable to Him for as long their nation existed. They had a duty to report in to Him on a regular basis; that’s what the annual holy days were all about. It didn’t matter how busy they were all year long, even if they served Him quite willingly and conscientiously. And it didn’t matter that He saw everything, including what was in their hearts. They were obliged to show up at a minimum number of festivals, if physically possible, to renew their sense of duty.

Heiser explains how this remained nonetheless risky in their minds. You cannot simply walk in and dirty the carpet for nothing. You had to ensure He would let you in the door without striking you down on the threshold. In the minds of the Hebrew believers, they dare not arrive empty-handed nor sloppy. This was not just any old guy that walked among them; this was the highest God of all Creation. You must come and accept the risk of His displeasure. Will God accept you?

This was what stood behind the burnt offerings. You may very well need to conduct some other business with other offerings, but this one thing you must get out of the way first: ensure that He would let you in the door. Visiting any important and powerful person, even today, should provoke thoughts of bringing a gift for the host/hostess. It is not transactional any more than that burnt offering. It sweetens your presence in their home; it’s the polar opposite of a sense of entitlement.

Learn the distinction between a sense of high privilege versus entitlement. It’s not about the person who carries the privilege, but the One who grants it.

Think about all the New Testament references to how Jesus reduced that barrier. When a Hebrew came to faith in Christ, he didn’t have to worry about what kind of offering to bring to the church meeting. He was the offering, and he was acceptable. We are His sanctuary. It also makes sense of Paul’s warnings about coming together for a solemn Lord’s Supper observance, and how too many people come before the Lord thinking it’s about them. How often have you attended a church gathering these days and it was clear the subconscious focus was entirely on the needs of the people there, instead of giving obeisance to Christ.

In our western church heritage, we don’t distinguish between the two kinds of sin as noted in the Old Testament. That initial burnt offering in Leviticus 1 was not about the worshiper, but about God. The blood was not applied to the worshiper. Maybe some of it was applied to the priest, but it was all about cleansing the place, calling attention to the blood price of human fallen nature. How dare you act entitled in God’s Presence!

It’s not how special we are, but how unique and holy He is. While we come before Him boldly in Christ, it is not with entitlement, but with a sense of high privilege.

Posted in bible | Tagged fallen nature, Leviticus, offerings, ritual observances, sacrifices, worship | Leave a comment

Two Types of OT Law

Posted on May 6, 2025 by ehurst

Heiser said that we need to understand the Hebrew mindset about the Law of Moses.

There are two types of law: serious moral concerns and mere ritual mistakes. Most of Leviticus is consumed in dealing with the latter. Rituals don’t have to be empty. I’ve written in the past that rituals teach us to take things seriously; it’s part of human nature. They are designed to answer the human need for a focal point in behavior. Also, the ritual law helps the Elect deal with all those who haven’t yet found themselves in feudal submission to the Lord.

A ritual mistake can be fixed; that’s what the sacrifices were meant to do. If you committed a serious moral error, there was no sacrifice for that. The latter was a major defilement of yourself, making you odious to God. Coming back from that was a whole different matter. A ritual mistake was a simple matter of following the prescribed rules to clean the slate. It was a matter of proper respect, a routine protocol.

Ritual uncleanness was communicable; moral sin was not. If you touch a woman in menstruation, you are ritually unclean. If you touch an adulteress, you don’t become ritually unclean. Ritual mistakes are a hassle; grave sins are a threat to everything, defiling the land and people. Grave sins may require capital punishment to keep peace with God.

What was a grave sin in the Old Testament is still a grave sin in the New. Ritual mistakes are generally not an issue in the New Covenant, though we do have equivalent rituals in Christ. We don’t require ritual offerings to restore balance; Christ took care of that part on the Cross. Gentiles can approach God in worship now.

I would add that it’s not as simple was calling the Ten Commandments “grave sins”. Paul made a major issue of things that are not listed in the Decalogue. You need to pay attention to the pattern of Jesus and His apostles to get a clue for what constitutes grave moral errors. You can repent and cleanse yourself from them, but it’s not a simple matter of ritual.

Posted in bible | Tagged Biblical Law, Law of Moses, Leviticus, moral accountability, old testament, rituals | 1 Comment

Bike Ministry Stuff

Posted on May 5, 2025 by ehurst

Unless you’ve experienced it, I seriously doubt you could possibly get excited about leather stuff for cycling. I’ve had a leather saddle in the past. Others have said it better: Once you have it broke in, if you trash the bike, you’ll pull that saddle off and take it with you. I have no idea what kind of magic is involved, but nothing of man-made materials can match it. I did okay with so-called “comfort saddles” of various designs, but nothing comes close to leather. I’ll be breaking this in over the next couple of weeks.

As for the riding gloves, it’s simply a matter of getting old. My hands go to sleep on long rides when wearing other types of gloves, but these have already proved to save me a lot of misery. It’s not just the leather, but the properly placed gel pads in the palms. Leather means durability.

This is a cove on Hefner Lake, showing how high the water level is after days and days of rain here in the OKC area. I have rain gear, and I’ve already treated the new saddle with mink oil, but the problem is a matter of safety. If I am ever at risk from motorists, it’s when rain dims their view of the world. I’ve been waiting, watching weather reports and looking for a stretch of clearing for my first camping trip. The current plan is Bell Cow Lake in Chandler. It should be a nice ride up the old US Highway 66, which has become the first major bicycle route in this state.

My needs are small. I still hope to get a better camera than my cellphone. I’m a cheapskate; I’d be happy with “good enough”. Pray with me about a Minolta MNB10Z. I found it on Best Buy’s site for about $200; I’m guessing it’s an older version of the current model, which costs a lot more. I’ll have to wait a few weeks before I can buy it. If it’s as good as I think it is, I won’t need a separate video camera.

Another issue related to our prolonged heavy rains is trail damage. This is a spot on our Eagle Lake Trail. Riders can still get across on that narrow neck where the pavement is still solid, but this image represents similar damage to little country backroads that I favor for cross country travel. Some of you may remember some years ago the pictures I posted of places where those country roads were completely washed away. That’s when I lived out in a rural area and such vulnerable roads were all I had. Most of those were put back better, but there are plenty of water crossings that have become weak since then. As I start riding out farther on a regular basis, I’m sure I’ll run across a few here and there.

Posted in cycling | Tagged bikepacking, cycling, photography | 1 Comment

Pulled Away

Posted on May 4, 2025 by ehurst

You’ve heard it before: If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans. Let me add: If you want to make God smile, ask Him about His plans.

I realize how radical a shift it is for Americans to invest themselves, with all their hopes, dreams and expectations, in the thesis of the Unseen Realm. If that outlook calls your name, it’s a monumental task changing your mental habits to match a new reality. You won’t be able to do this without the power of the Holy Spirit.

Consistent with His character and history, God is warning His people that tribulation is coming. That has leaked out into society at large. You can find sharp minded analysis from lots of people. They can see what’s happening, but their expectations assume no substantial divine power in their analysis. The best you can say is that, if God doesn’t intervene (as He typically does) then this is where we are headed.

But a biblical viewpoint is to assume God will have His hand in things, and the smartest of human estimates will miss in one way or another. The best hope is to invest yourself in studying what God has said and done in the past. More to the point, you must invest yourself in keeping warm relations with Him, because He does share His plans with His people.

The biggest difficulty is getting His people to think in terms of what He actually does. They will get impressions in their convictions that they often misread because their heads are too deeply invested in human concerns. They mistakenly believe that humans can evaluate good and evil and come up with a valid plan of action, and that human needs actually matter. God says they don’t.

I’m not saying He won’t grant your requests, even your silliest ones. He does that, but His motives are not at all what most people have been taught. The whole point is His glory, and it’s very much a strong cultural image from the past. The only way you can really understand God is to adhere to the packaging in which revelation was delivered to mankind. He portrayed Himself as a near eastern potentate, a nomad sheikh, and still acts very much like that. If you can’t absorb that motif, you will never really understand God.

This is one place where I differ strongly from Heiser. In one of his podcasts, he said that God simply operated within the culture of the Israelites because that was what He had to work with. As you should know by now, I insist that God knowingly built the culture of Israel because it was the clearest way to reveal Himself. In other words, my take is that there are substantial hints in the culture of Israel that form the substance of truth about human existence in this fallen realm.

The teachings of Jesus and Paul point to that idea, promoting what Heiser thought were mere cultural trappings. There’s no way to reconcile this difference. If you want my spiritual covering, you’ll have to tolerate my take on things. There is still a very substantial organization carrying on Heiser’s work if you prefer to join that (and here, among other places).

Just the stuff he and I do agree on will tend to marginalize you. Because the biblical path is so radically different from the mainstream, it naturally calls for pulling out of the mainstream. How far should we go? I’ll suggest some measures, but it’s best if you read between the lines. The substance of our worldly existence is as a tribal feudal covenant community. There’s no way to impose that on anyone who doesn’t first dismiss the core values of American society and history. People must volunteer for the Covenant, and leave everything behind. Doing so is a miracle, because it really makes no sense on a human level.

We expect to have no influence on the world at large. The only good we can do in this life is to help a few people whom the Lord calls to our path. Let the world go wherever the Devil and his allies lead it; God has delivered it into their hands for a time. It will all be destroyed at some point. Meanwhile, He redeems individuals that He pulls out of this realm and into His family household.

Posted in teaching | Tagged covenant community of faith, divine revelation, feudalism, Michael S. Heiser, social sciences, tribalism, Unseen Realm | Leave a comment

PTSD 02

Posted on May 3, 2025 by ehurst

PTSD is not just on or off; there are degrees and varying types. Not every trauma provokes PTSD. After talking with some folks who were diagnosed with it, the common thread seems to be a sense of betrayal.

When that betrayal comes from one or more known individuals, it’s generally easier to handle the trauma. In my case, it was from living with a badly damaged father who induced needless trauma while fighting his own demons. What really wounds most people is when the betrayal comes from false expectations rooted in society and culture; it feels like the whole world has been lying to you. That’s a shock that you may not get over.

Our American existence is loaded with deception. What makes things unbearable for some folks is that the boundaries of their reality were false from childhood. Everything they experienced right up into adulthood only seemed consistent with the lies of childhood. And then, something happens to destroy the illusion, but they were never prepared for handling the shock. The failure to teach resilience is part of the lie.

The reason parents deceive their kids that way is because they were deceived themselves. It rolls on back into previous generations of people holding onto false notions about reality. But along about the birth of my generation, it seems to have become a sacred duty of parents to build a fantasy world for their children. It’s gotten worse since then with each succeeding generation even more deceived.

The most common denominator among military veterans with PTSD is the shocking disconnect between what their own military leadership tells them and what actually happens. The US government has become totally Orwellian about such things. The betrayal is so overwhelming that PTSD statistics have soared.

Our society is coming apart, and we should be surprised at how few people exhibit symptoms of PTSD. This is not something steered by mere human spite; it is the work of enemies in the Spirit Realm.

A generic solution is not possible; no two individuals suffer the exact same trauma. It’s one thing to come up with a label based on common symptoms. It’s another thing to design treatment plans that seek to restore faith in the same system that caused the trauma. That system is steered by demons in the first place. The caregivers are not the enemy, but don’t trust them. They aren’t allowed to see the truth; the basis for their employment rests on not seeing it.

The obvious solution is forming a faith community outside the system. Give the victims a chance to see clearly the stakes: This is spiritual warfare aimed at destroying humanity. A major element is deception and destruction of faith — faith in the Creator, in particular. Rather, the Dark Kingdom has raised up any number of false gods with a mythology that sets us up to be knocked down.

Stop blaming the minions who have no idea what’s going on; they are victims, too. The first step in recovery is to ditch the false worldview that puts humans on the precipice. Create a healing community that restores trust where it belongs in our Lord. This has been the consistent mission of this blog.

These two posts serve as the Bible lesson for this week.

Addenda: The healing process should be obvious. You must first forgive yourself for believing nonsense. Next, you must forgive the people who lied to you, because they were under the same deception. That’s the reason it’s easier to forgive someone who caused you trauma, but not so easy when it’s the whole society in which you live. But it is doable; you forgive the society when you fully embrace the truth that the people who rule are not the cause, only the agents. This is why we don’t try to hold them accountable in terms of their participation in evil, as if they knew they were doing evil. They are doomed and they need redemption from the same lies that harmed us.

The only hope for their redemption is for us to claim our own and demonstrate it.

Posted in sanity | Tagged covenant community of faith, epistemology, sanity, social welfare system, Unseen Realm | 1 Comment

PTSD 01

Posted on May 2, 2025 by ehurst

I had a dream last night — a nightmare, actually — that reminded me of something.

PTSD: post traumatic stress disorder

The label “PTSD” itself is overwrought, as if having it applied to you is a death sentence. The term sounds like part of a bureaucratic nightmare of Byzantine gotchas, where no matter what you say or do, someone with power over you will find some reason to oppress you. The people who came up with this system are not your friends. They will use you to squeeze funding out of government and private charities and, having once gotten those resources, will keep you trapped in the system in order to keep them flowing.

That’s not a quote from someone else, but it reflects the kind of thinking you should expect from people with PTSD. The business of testing and treating for PTSD is organized in a way that makes you think everyone in the system is a victim of PTSD themselves. They claim to have goals, as if there is an endpoint to which they are steering their clients, hoping the victims will someday reach stability. But the goals are tainted deeply with impossibilities. The model for sanity is itself insane.

It’s the same bizarre mindset that comes with a certain school of thought associated with substance abuse treatment. If you have ever talked much with someone who is a true believer in the Twelve Step Program, you know what I mean. Once they get a single hook into your life, you can never escape. They’ll keep yanking that hook, insisting you are one of their kind, with some kind of abuse syndrome that simply must surrender to the treatment program. And they have an inside line with government and law enforcement; the whole thing is a madhouse.

I’ve worked in law enforcement and government bureaucracy. I’ve experienced this first hand. The mainstream “help” is the last thing you should trust. Their whole world stands firmly on the foundation of dragging you into a prison and keeping you there until you die.

It’s shockingly rare when someone with PTSD comes to a place where they can function and hold their own, same as alcoholism, sex offender disorders, etc. The people who run the system understand those maladies just enough to use them as leverage for empowering themselves, because they are all victims themselves of some serious disorder. They must seize some kind of power any way possible in order to feel safe. Good moral people avoid having control over others.

The treatment model is itself detached from reality.

Granted, it should be obvious to you by now that I have suffered trauma of this sort, and have endured a system that pretended it wanted to make things better. All the good help I got came from outside the system. Rather than regale you with tales of the bad experiences, let’s talk about how I escaped: the miracle of a tiny rare breed of people who walk in humility and faith.

God does have His divine agents working in this world. The vast majority of them operate outside of systems. People within the system tend to have their faith stolen away from them. Their spiritual and moral sensibilities get cauterized to the point it all stops working. I’ve seen this first hand, experienced it myself internally. It can take a long time to remove that scar tissue.

The system itself generates the PTSD experience. It promotes people who are so deeply damaged themselves that they become experts at destroying sanity, sniffing it out like bloodhounds. They will seek to traumatize everyone who presents the least evidence of good moral character. Do you ever wonder where the fictional image of zombies comes from, those creatures that seek to infect you with the same madness that has already killed them? That image comes from the twisted minds of Americans.

It is not possible to verbally delineate an antidote. I suppose if you and I were talking face to face, it might be possible to take you by the hand and walk you partway out of the prison. The best I can offer you on a blog is the assurance that escape is possible because I’ve escaped. You must take the steps yourself, but instead of someone like me painting them on the floor for you, all I can do is point you in a direction.

More to come…

Posted in sanity | Tagged government, medicine, mental-health, PTSD, system of logic, trauma | Leave a comment

The Trailer Arrives

Posted on April 29, 2025 by ehurst

1. The trailer finally arrived. Just so you’ll get a small taste of the experience, I’m doing the slow sequence of unboxing. It arrived by US Postal Service late in the day. I picked it up at the office during a lull in the rain that has plagued us all day. The box is just over knee high to me.

2. The trailer comes packed in its own travel bag. The whole thing folds up to fit inside. This is so you can pack it up, like a folding bike, for movement via public transportation, if needed. The bag is also handy for helping organize the load, as you’ll see in a moment. I had seen videos of how to unpack, so it wasn’t a mystery to me.

3. This is the whole thing unpacked and folded. It resembles a specialized two-wheeled dolly, and can be used as one. I’ve seen videos of people who tide to a grocery store and use it as a shopping buggy, using their own shopping bags or tote baskets, etc. It’s not all that tough, but it’s versatile for most things. The load capacity is rated at 60 pounds.

4. This is the trailer properly attached to my Zizzo Forte. In case you weren’t aware, you can see I’ve made some upgrades to the bike itself: better handlebars, a real mirror, and I’ve built a twin bottle rack for the front. The blue bag on the front can be replaced with a backpack that hangs off the handlebars and rests on the front rack. That way I can carry everything I’m likely to need for really long trips.

5. My wife captured me taking it for a test ride. I have a small load on it just to get a feel for it. With not much load, I never even felt much difference. I tried to become aware of the wider track, but other than that, I hardly felt anything at all. It jumped curbs and everything. I’m impressed with how smoothly it pulls, no bumping or jerking. Looking forward to that first camping trip!

Posted in cycling | Tagged Burley Travoy, camping, cycling, folding bicycle | 3 Comments

Numerology versus Gematria

Posted on April 26, 2025 by ehurst

Then I saw another beast coming up from the earth. He had two horns like a lamb, but was speaking like a dragon. He exercised all the ruling authority of the first beast on his behalf, and made the earth and those who inhabit it worship the first beast, the one whose lethal wound had been healed. He performed momentous signs, even making fire come down from heaven to earth in front of people and, by the signs he was permitted to perform on behalf of the beast, he deceived those who live on the earth. He told those who live on the earth to make an image to the beast who had been wounded by the sword, but still lived. The second beast was empowered to give life to the image of the first beast so that it could speak, and could cause all those who did not worship the image of the beast to be killed. He also caused everyone (small and great, rich and poor, free and slave) to obtain a mark on their right hand or on their forehead. Thus no one was allowed to buy or sell things unless he bore the mark of the beast — that is, his name or his number. This calls for wisdom: Let the one who has insight calculate the beast’s number, for it is man’s number, and his number is 666. (Revelation 13:11-18 NET)

We’ve seen no end of speculation on what to make of the “666” from this passage. Most people run to the traditions of gematria. From the website My Jewish Learning, we get this definition of gematria:

Gematria is a numerological system by which Hebrew letters correspond to numbers. This system, developed by practitioners of Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism), derived from Greek influence and became a tool for interpreting biblical texts.

Notice that gematria is not Hebraic, but from the Hellenized Jewish nonsense that brought them the Talmud. It would be familiar to the writers of the New Testament in the same way — as an intellectual practice that is foreign to revelation.

Here’s the main problem: There is no regulating principle for gematria. You can chase it in both directions, reducing letters to numbers, or trying to guess how to make letters come out of the numbers. It’s too easy to monkey around with the results going in either direction because the rules aren’t strict enough to prevent gaming the outcome. How many of us could find a way to make our names in English come out to 666? Most of us.

Notice what the passage in John’s Revelation says: The Beast will rule by making sure everyone bears the ensign/icon of his control. In John’s day, this language refers to operating (the hand) and thinking (the forehead) under allegiance to the Beast. The Hebrew concept of “name” is not at all like it is in English or other western languages. In the Bible, “name” is not a legal identifier, but most often a title or role. God’s “name” represents His authority. To avoid saying His name in vain, Hebrews would refer to ha’shem — literally “the name” to indicate they were talking about Jehovah.

In this sense, a more useful study would be numerology — the symbolism of numbers. The most common example is 7, typically representing something ritually holy (devoted, separated). In the Hebrew language, the phrase “to seven something” means to ritually bind it, to devote it to God. You could be said to “seven yourself” — binding by an oath to God.

While the number 3 is often associated with the Trinity, that’s not where it comes from. It shows up places like Paul’s mention of the “third (level of) Heaven”. The number is structural. It symbolizes how you should expect God to operate, in the sense that, if God did something, it likely will manifest in triples somehow.

You may have seen frequent uses of 40 to represent a time of testing in the sense of preparation. Meanwhile, 3.5 is a time of tribulation under God’s wrath. Note that there are several ways to get to that 3.5 years, counting the days, weeks or months.

The number 12 is “the whole thing”. Any mention of the twelve tribes should be obvious, pointing to the whole nation of Israel in toto. If you see 24 elders in John’s Revelation, it points to the representatives of twelve tribes from two sources, the fullness of Israel and the Gentiles.

In standard numerology, 6 means coming up short of 7. It is the number representing fallen human nature. If you triple 7, it is the structural completion of holiness. To triple 6 means the fullness of what humans can accomplish. Translation grammar for the passage cited above indicates a better rendering of the last verse might be that 666 is the number of mankind as a whole. The Beast will rule as the pinnacle of what man can accomplish outside of the Covenant.

Posted in bible | Tagged Bible translation, gematria, Kabbalism, numerology, symbolic references | Leave a comment